Guiding principle in effective product development culture. — Thanks to John Cutler for the pithiest wording I’ve seen so far to describe this phenomenon. The absolute worst approach is to Think Small and Work Big. No coherent bigger picture strategy. Large development effort with no release in sight. Think Big…

Guiding principle in effective product development culture. Making things through making people Toyota has a phrase “monozukuri wa hitozukuri”. It can be roughly translated to “making things through making people”. In other words, developing good products is about developing the people to develop those good products. Developing products is about developing people. Product development is “alive” because of people

Guiding principle in effective product development culture. There are many ways to say it: de facto over de jure standards, natural over imposed consistency, cross-pollination over imposed standards. They are all describing the same way to answer the question: how should standard ways of doing something be spread more broadly? …

Why it’s useful for coaches to know how to play — The Ladder of Leadership is a leadership development model created by L. David Marquet and Stephen Covey. It proposes a ladder of increasing leadership behaviour: Tell me what to do. I see.. I think… I would like to… I intend to… I’ve done… I’ve been doing… …as well as coaching…

Guiding principle in effective product development culture. “Control, we discovered, only works with a competent workforce that understands the organization’s purpose. Hence, as control is divested, both technical competence and organizational clarity need to be strengthened.” Marquet, L. David. Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into…

See also User Stories to facilitate shared understanding. To provide context, “Think Big Work Small”. “Successful product teams figure out how to think big and work small.” John Cutler, “TBM 46/53: Think Big, Work Small” See also TBM 4/52: Think Big, Work Small (Part 2) — by John Cutler (substack.com) which has a nice diagram overview. Bad (😞): Just big stories with no breakdown Bad (😞): Just small stories with no larger context

See also Users Stories to facilitate iterative, incremental development. Shared documents aren’t shared understanding. “Shared documents aren’t shared understanding.” User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton Bad (😞): Assuming shared documents is the same as shared understanding. Better (🤔): Using stories to facilitate conversation.

The “5” is a reminder to avoid shallow attribution When faced with a problem, there’s a general tendency for people to only consider the immediate contributing factors. The “5” in “5 Whys” is a reminder to go beyond shallow attribution and keep exploring underlying causes.